What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2013-2852

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.9 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2013-06-07 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-134

Description

Format string vulnerability in the b43_request_firmware function in drivers/net/wireless/b43/main.c in the Broadcom B43 wireless driver in the Linux kernel through 3.9.4 allows local users to gain privileges by leveraging root access and including format string specifiers in an fwpostfix modprobe parameter, leading to improper construction of an error message.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 10.04, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04
• Debian Linux: 6.0
• Linux kernel: from 2.6.12 before 3.0.83; from 3.1 before 3.2.47; from 3.3 before 3.4.50; from 3.5 before 3.9.7 — fixed in 3.0.83, 3.2.47, 3.4.50, 3.9.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.0.83, 3.2.47, 3.4.50, 3.9.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless.git/commit/?id=9538cbaab6e8b8046039b4b2eb6c9d614dc782bd
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2013-09/msg00003.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-12/msg00129.html
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-1051.html
• http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-1450.html
• http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2766
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/06/06/13
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1899-1
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1900-1
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1914-1
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1915-1
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1916-1

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